Tonight my fiance and I have invited his mother to dinner to tell her we're engaged. My family already knows because the live 9 hours away, but my fiance wanted to wait until we got the ring to tell his mom, and well, here we are!
Now, as you may or may not have figured out, we like to cook. And his mom isn't close minded when it comes to food, though it does sound like she's not especially open to eating a meal made from meat substitutes (i.e. Tofurkey, seitan, veggie burgers, etc.). We sat on the couch around midnight looking through VeganYumYum and VegWeb trying to find inspiration. I found that we kept leaning toward pasta dishes, which is what she normally serves us when we visit her house. I think pasta tends to be a default vegan dish. It's easy and filling and doesn't have to involve cheese or dairy. We were leaning heavy towards VeganYumYum's Pistachio Arugala Pesto with Penne and Sauteed Brocolini, when I turned to him and said, "We need to show her that vegan dishes are more versatile and cook something other than pasta."
He remembered when I had made him stuffed peppers when we first starting dating and we agreed this would be a more interesting dinner choice and would show his mom that we don't just eat pasta! My stuffed peppers incorporate quinoa, TVP, salsa, sauteed veggies and bread crumbs. They're really yummy. In addition, we're going to make a nice big herb salad and I'm going to try baking a Mediterranean olive loaf from The Joy of Vegan Baking. For dessert, I'm going to test out a new From Scratch & Sniff cupcake idea - ginger cupcakes with bosk pear filling, dipped in chocolate ganache, topped with vanilla icing. Yum!
I've got a full day of cooking ahead of me so I'd better hop to it. I'll share my stuffed pepper recipe later; I don't normally measure the ingredients so I'll pay attention when I make it today and try to give you some more exact instructions!
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